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I've come across an interesting idiom in the following sentence:

> もしも私が社長だったら、あの人 **を首にする** と思います。 If I were the company president, I would
> fire that person.

What is the origin of the idiom 首にする?


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2023-10-20T23:56:35.963
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question
etymology idioms
The origin of 首にする


First note that there is another expression (Aの)首を切る, which means the same as
(Aを)首にする.

The most relevant expression in English should be _head count_ although I
think it is used mostly for hiring. The idea should be just the same, cutting
off heads means reducing the number of people.

More precisely, there is a jukugo
[馘首{かくしゅ}](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A6%98%E9%A6%96-460314) meaning _to
fire_. According to web searches 馘首 was read くび conventionally, hence
馘首{くび}になる meant _to get fired_. (I think still
[馘](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A6%98%28%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%29-2785202)になる is
sometimes used. Strictly speaking, 首にする/なる is a misusage of 首, albeit totally
common.)


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I'm an etymology geek -- I love finding out how and when different words and
expressions and meanings arose. I offer this as an addition to
@[sundowner](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/users/45489/)'s fine [answer
post](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/101419/5229).

> What is the origin of the idiom 首にする?

Let's look first at the meanings of 首【くび】. My source is the
日本国語大辞典【にほんこくごだいじてん】 (NKD), basically like the OED only for Japanese. A
somewhat abridged version of this dictionary is offered free of charge via the
Kotobank resource aggregator website (in Japanese): <https://kotobank.jp/>

### 首【くび】 meanings

The NKD entry at Kotobank is
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A6%96%E3%83%BB%E9%A0%B8-2032217). From
that, we learn that 首【くび】 first referred to the _" neck"_, the part of the
body along the spine where the torso narrows and connects to the head. This
sense is first cited to the
[日本書紀【にほんしょき】](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihon_Shoki) of 720, basically
around the earliest horizon of any longer texts written in the Japanese
language.

Later on, in the late 900s, the word 首【くび】 is cited to mean _" the part of the
body from the neck upwards"_, basically synonymous with _" head"_.

Then some 800+ years after that, around 1800, we get a citation of the term
used to mean _" one's end, specifically with regard to the end of one's
relation or connection to someone else"_, apparently as an extension from the
idea of _" beheading: losing one's head"_.

Consider the development of senses for the English word _" head"_, as used in
expressions like _" it will be your head!"_ -- we see a similar shift from a
literal sense of "the topmost body part", to a reference to losing that body
part (and dying), to figurative senses of being fired.

### The phrase 首【くび】にする

The NKD entry for this is
[here](https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%A6%96%E3%81%AB%E3%81%99%E3%82%8B-251407).
The first citation we see is from 1802, just two years after we see 首【くび】 on
its own used to refer to the end of a connection.

The ～にする construction is pretty straightforward: this means _" do something
into ~, make something into ~, treat something as ~"_, so the combination of
首【くび】 _" one's end"_ + にする produces the expected meaning of _" to bring
someone to their end, to end someone, with regard to a relation or
connection"_.


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